Chris Spencer, a Republican candidate challenging incumbent Tennessee State Senator Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) in the August 1 TN-18 GOP primary, refused to answer whether he’d vote for or against Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill during the next legislative session of the General Assembly if elected.
The governor’s school choice bill, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, failed to pass the General Assembly during the most recently convened session of the General Assembly.
Lee’s bill, if passed, would have made 20,000 Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) worth $7,000 available for Tennessee students in the 2024-2025 school year. If the demand exceeds available funding, it would prioritize currently enrolled students, low-income students, and public school students.
Since the bill’s failure to pass, leadership in both the Tennessee House and Senate have vowed to reintroduce the bill next legislative session.
When pressed on the bill, Spencer said the governor should have given grants to private schools across Tennessee for expansion projects, citing capacity concerns with awarding vouchers.
“Here’s what I would have done. Here’s what I think would have maybe worked. Maybe if Governor Lee would have said, ‘This is my desire, let’s build the infrastructure and give grants to these private schools so that they can build classroom sizes and build buildings and so forth, maybe instead of giving $800 million to Ford, let’s give some money to these private schools.’ If you really want people to have a place to use these vouchers, you can’t say there’s 10,000 vouchers for students and then just go find a school,” Spencer said on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
While Spencer (pictured above) confirmed that he “probably” would have voted against the bill this past legislative session, he would not say if he would vote for the bill – assuming the language is the same as it was in the Senate’s version of the governor’s bill – next legislative session if elected.
“I want to see the language…I think that for such a controversial bill, such as this, I think that town halls need to be done and I think that we should be talking to the voters of District 18,” Spencer said.
Moving forward, Spencer said that while he is “not against vouchers,” he’d rather there be a tax rebate for students who wish to pursue their education in an institution other than the school system they are zoned for.
Regarding public education, Spencer agreed that Tennessee’s public schools are underperforming and said he wants to “change the education system” to include more teachings on civics and the nation’s founding documents.
Above all, however, Spencer said the “most important issue” to him in his campaign for state senate is illegal immigration, which he argues Haile’s record on the topic has been “terrible” despite the incumbent voting to pass multiple bills this past session to address the effects of illegal immigration at the state level.
Watch Spencer’s interview here:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Chris Spencer” by Chris Spencer.
